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my next question is: When will we have these small planes with true autopilots, which would allow a true novice to fly them? And surely people are working on

• slavak 10y ago
  Probably not in the foreseeable future; the market just isn't there, and in large part- the technology isn't either. For one thing, the technology for truly automatic or nearly-automatic landing (takeoff might be simpler) requires a lot of equipment at the airport, which the vast majority of airports a hobby pilot would fly from will never install. Since takeoff and landing are by far the most difficult and dangerous parts of the flight, this pretty much automatically precludes the possibility of an untrained pilot. Add to that, the stance in aviation is that the pilot must be capable of taking control of the aircraft if there is any problem with the automation. I don't know the statistics, but presumably the sensors and automation by itself are not reliable enough to function completely autonomously and without supervision 100% of the time. And if you're gonna have a hobby pilot that is perfectly capable of flying the plane manually, full automation is just a massive waste of money.